Thousands of bodies exhumed from macabre burial sites in Syria could belong to the victims of murderous ISIS executioner Jihadi John, Sun Online can reveal.

Medical charity Initial Body Recover [IBR] has dug up more than 4,000 bodies from six mass graves in Raqqa, once the dark heart of the terror group’s tyrannical empire.

Owen Holdaway

A medical team in Syria has dug up thousands of bodies in the hopes of finding and identifying Jihadi John’s victims

Masked executioner Jihadi John – real name Mohammed Emwazi – was responsible for taking part in the executions of seven western hostages and 22 Syrians in sick ISIS propaganda videos – and is believed to have killed many more captives off camera .

The remains of the Westerners – including American journalist James Foley and Brits Alan Henning and David Haines – have never been found.

But they are not believed to be among the bodies seen by Sun Online as such high-status prisoners are highly unlikely to have been handed over to the medical team led by Dr Yasar Khamis in Raqqa.

Owen Holdaway

Lead investigator Dr Yasar Khamis said many corpses, like this one found in Raqqa, showed signs of decapitation

This corpse, which was also decapitated, was one of 4,000 to be dug up from macabre burial sites in the terror group’s former ‘capital’ of Raqqa

Dr Khamis says he has found several decapitated bodies buried in the infamous orange jumpsuits worn by ISIS execution victims.

Speaking to Sun Online, who joined the volunteers on their quest for answers, Dr Khamis said: “Identifying the dead can be extremely hard as often the bodies are too decomposed.

“When we first entered the city, it was a disaster. Our work was very hard because of [unexploded] bombs, even though we were recovering a lot of dead ISIS fighters and their victims,” Dr Khamis said.

“It was particularly dangerous near the hospital. The smell was terrible and getting the bodies that were buried underground in the tunnels was very difficult.”

“In total we have recovered over 4,000 bodies, [but] we are finding more and more each day.

Refer to Caption

Masked executioner Jihadi John – real name Mohammed Emwazi – was responsible for taking part in the executions of seven western hostages and 22 Syrians in sick ISIS propaganda videos

Owen Holdaway

Dr Khamis’ team has so far found six mass graves, each with at least 300 bodies, but the vast majority are so decomposed they are impossible to identify

The majority of corpses dug up in Raqqa apparently belong to Syrians who were killed when airstrikes levelled the city during the terror group’s final days there

Owen Holdaway

Dr Khamis’ team has traversed minefield and tunnels to recover the bodies, though most of them have simply been reburied in ‘nameless’ graves

Owen Holdaway

This is apparently the body of a mother and son who died in an airstrike near Raqqa

“We simply don’t have the resources. The best we can usually do is just to catalogue them and give them a good [unnamed] burial.”

While many of these bodies belong to victims of airstrikes which levelled much the city, not all of them are Syrian locals.

Dr Khamis said the bodies were recovered from “vast”, landmine-strewn area around the Syrian 17th Army base, three miles north of Raqqa.

The US team handed over the six bodies seen in the photos in the article but kept a seventh, believed to be the beheaded remains of a “foreign male”, because they wanted to carry out further tests.

Owen Holdaway

The medical team told Sun Online this man was killed by shrapnel from a falling bomb

Dr Khamis, right, allowed Sun Online to join his team on their quest to find Emwazi’s victims

Read more about the ISIS terror group

Hopes of one-day finding Emwazi’s victims were given a huge boost when two of his fellow ‘Beatles’ execution gang, Alexanda Kotey, 34, and El Shafee Elsheikh, 29, were captured in Eastern Syria in January.

In February, Haines’ heartbroken wife Dragana demanded the two killers reveal where the aid worker from east Yorkshire was buried.

Mohammed, one of the volunteers scouring Raqqa’s burial sites, said: “I really hope [the families in the UK & America] can get their relatives’ bodies back.

“We talk with families who [also] just want to know if they can bury their dead – but usually we don’t know what happened to their relatives.”

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